WARNING: This post is about actual teaching. Occasionally I reflect on that. Turtle update will be posted after school.

Throughout my early teaching career, I have possessed a keen interest in the process of second language acquisition as it pertains to my content area. Often students that are entering the classroom without prior knowledge of English possess little knowledge of the traditional American history narrative. As a high school teacher, it is imperative that I acknowledge this gap in content knowledge and familiarize these individuals with the ‘traditional’ narrative in order to prepare them for the standardized graduation requirements. With that being said, a significant portion of my Masters Research Project (MRP) acknowledges that the content knowledge these students bring into the American classroom should NOT be discounted as a lesser narrative. Rather, students of all cultures and languages should feel welcomed to share their stories as a parallel, not conflicting, history.

With this educational philosophy firmly planted in my head, I entered the high school classroom in Costa Rica. Upon my arrival, I was informed that I would be teaching literature to students in grades 8-11. Although I am not a literature teacher, I was very familiar with many of the texts required in the curriculum, particularly the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird. For this reason, I looked forward to the ninth grade periods in the day when I would be able to explore the story with the students. When I invited the ninth graders to open their texts, however, they all groaned. “We hate this book!” “Nobody understands what’s going on!” “It’s boring!” Classic ninth grade complaints. However, it was clear when I asked for a basic summary that truly NO ONE knew what the book was about. I was able to clarify that the students were familiar with the main characters’ personalities, but other than that, they found the storyline to be extremely confusing. My first reaction was to assume it was a language barrier; maybe the flowery language at some points of the story was too much for ninth grade English language learners. Honestly, I read the book as an English speaking student in tenth grade, so the possibility did not seem too absurd. When I asked students to define ‘difficult’ words, however, they seemed to grasp the general ideas easily. At this point, I recognized it was a CONTENT problem, not a language problem. The same points I had learned as a history teacher were applicable in this setting. If the students do not understand the setting, the context of the story, the tale will not make sense. The students present in my class did not know what sleepy Alabama summers look like; they did not understand the history of Jim Crow laws, segregation, the Great Depression. To my students, the idea that a white man would defend a black man did not seem like a big deal. Why were the characters so upset about that? I realized instantly that I needed to place the students in the setting in order to make the story come alive… or at least make some coherent sense.

Fortunately, as an American Government teacher I taught Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) extensively. Thinking on my feet, I flipped open a PowerPoint on my laptop entitled “Separate but Equal.” Although the language of the presentation went a little over the heads of my students, the pictures and my dialogue filled in what the students needed to know about the history of slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. I showed the students pictures of the KKK and examples of Jim Crow laws that were enacted in Alabama during the time period of the book. I posted a picture of colored drinking fountains and asked if separate meant equal. Drawing a quick timeline on the front board, I was able to express to the students how recently these events had occurred. When I explained that segregation in Boston schools was still an issue in MY lifetime, the students looked appalled. “I don’t understand,” one of my outspoken male students interjected, “How come we didn’t know America has all of these bad things?” At this point, I paused. Well, my first reaction was, thank goodness you are not mandated to take an American history class as part of your Costa Rican graduate requirements. That would be imperialism at its best. My second thought was, I cannot fault your Costa Rican teacher for not explaining segregation and contextualizing this story. I bet To Kill a Mockingbird did not make much sense to her either! In a strange and obscure way, the school system in Costa Rica was assuming its English teachers possessed a prior knowledge base of American history.

The next afternoon, I had a United Streaming video prepared on Emmitt Till. The case in which a black man was accused of making advances on a white woman (with a very awful ending) in 1930s Mississippi paralleled some of the aspects of the case in Lee’s town of Maycomb. When the video showed the streets of Mississippi, I stopped to read descriptions of setting from the text that were present in the clip. When the students were outraged at the lack of justice in the case, I asked if they would have been strong enough to stand up for what they believed was right in the same manner as Atticus Finch. It was wild for me to see students so passionate about a history they had never known existed 24 hours ago. Armed with this new contextual understanding, we read ahead in the text. By the end of the week, several students allowed that the book was “tolerable.”

There are still significant challenges that I face with this text and this class. The largest of which I will be addressing in class on Thursday—the use of the ‘n’ word. Students recognize the word from popular music from the United States, and Lee uses the word frequently in the text. Although I have indicated several times when reading as a class that the word has a very negative connotation today, many students model Lee’s use the word to describe characters. At first, I shied away from addressing this rather uncomfortable topic. However, it has become apparent over the past few days that this is an issue I cannot afford to overlook. Imagine if my students were to come to the United States and believe the word was acceptable! It is much better for me to address the topic head on than to wait until the end of the book!

What did I learn from this experience? Well, the readings I had to do for Katy Arnett are actually applicable in the real world. Besides that point, I learned that establishing the setting and the context of a story is critical to the understanding of a text, whether it is a historical narrative or literature. Prior knowledge of an event or society cannot be assumed, even if it is a history of the all-powerful United States. I also learned that misconceptions may exist about language or cultures that seem completely unfathomable to a native English speaker in the United States. We cannot fault these students for thinking certain words are acceptable. Rather, we should look at the sources where the students have gathered this information. If American pop music and a treasured literature text use a word, students assume it is okay.

Today, I began my unit on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the twelfth graders (I am VERY relieved I just missed the end of their Macbeth unit!). I sat the students down and had them close their eyes. Slowly, I described the busy streets of London in the mid 1800s. I illustrated pleasant buildings, and then paused to mention the boarded up dwelling at the end of the street. I asked students to explain what the building looked like. Without even opening the text, the students accurately described Stevenson’s English dwelling belonging to Mr. Hyde. As we read through the first chapter, the students continued to add onto their initial description of the house. “Now we know it has shutters on the side, but no windows.” I could tell just from this initial class meeting that many of my students are visual learners. Towards the end of the period, one of my students said, “This sounds like the town in that new movie Sherlock Holmes.” Perfect! I jumped on the parallel. “Has anyone seen that movie? That’s London in this time period.” Many students nodded. The context of the story was slowly forming.